Madalina knew that giving in to her attraction to Cole would probably cause more problems than it solved, but she couldn’t make herself look away from him for anything. She couldn’t make herself draw back or ignore what she thought was desire flickering through his gaze.
A sharp bang startled a yelp out of her. She whipped a look to her right, where the sound originated from. Cole had his gun in his hand in a heartbeat, the moment of an almost-kiss shattered by someone getting into the car parked next to the Jaguar. When Madalina realized it was just the sound of a car door and that the customer driving away had nothing to do with the Chinese agents, she slumped against the seat and struggled to steady her breathing.
Cole tucked the gun into the holster strapped to the front of the seat under his legs and put the Jaguar in gear. “Right. Okay. Oh, and you know what else? I think we shouldn’t call Lianne first. I think we should show up later, try and find a way to arrive at her house unseen.”
“That’s a good idea. She’ll probably be in her pajamas—”
“I don’t care about that. She might, but everyone’s safety is more important. Do you know of any way to get inside her house without driving up in the driveway and announcing our presence?”
“Yes. There’s a golf course and stands of trees behind her back fence. A walking trail goes through the trees that we use a few times a week. We can park in the golf course lot, then go through the trees to her back fence. She keeps it locked, but I know how to get in.” Madalina watched buildings flash by out the window, everything a watery shade of gray. Her heart rate finally returned to a more normal rhythm.
“Excellent. We’ll do that, then.”
After a moment’s thought, Madalina said, “Cole?”
“Yes?”
She saw him glance her way from the corner of her eye. “I want to go to Chino. I can’t stop thinking about Mom and Dad’s house.”
“They might be watching it, like they were watching yours. Then we’ll have to lose them all over again.”
“Maybe we’ll find a clue there. Something that will lead us in the right direction. Plus—well, I grew up in that house. It’s bothering me to think it’s now in the same shape as my own.”
Cole went quiet, apparently thinking over their options.
She looked across the car instead of at the blurry scenery. “Or we can go to the library and use the computer there to see if we find any new information on that dragon. If we find a duplicate on a site for cheap collectibles at two dollars and ninety-nine cents, then that should give us a good indication that the Chinese agents want something else, right?”
He met her eyes across the car, then looked back to the road. “We’ll go to your parents’ house first. If we don’t find anything there, then we’ll find a Wi-Fi spot and park. I’ve got a laptop in the trunk.”
Relieved, Madalina said, “Thank you. Besides, we can’t go back to the hotel unless we rent another room, and we’ve got hours until it gets dark to go to Lianne’s. This gives us something to do and might answer some questions.”
“And it might get us killed.”
“Thanks a lot, Mr. Pessimist. That’s a step down from the Grouch,” she announced, then added, “I should lend you the book I just read a few weeks ago. It’s not helping me right now, but you might need it more than I did. It’s called Positive Thinking: The Power of Optimism.”
He laughed, but sobered moments later. “I have no idea what you just said. Give me directions and remember, if you do wind up in Chinese hands, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Get hold of yourself, Cole. You almost kissed her. He chided himself on the drive to Chino for the near miss in the car after lunch. Before he’d known what he was doing, his hand had been in her hair, their lips an inch apart. He could still smell the inviting sweetness of her, still see the glimpse of desire in her that he’d felt himself. Would it be such a bad thing? She’s beginning to trust me, to confide in me.
Dismissing the thoughts before they distracted him from the current task—namely, keeping her out of danger—Cole pulled into a tract of houses he gauged to have been built somewhere during the late seventies. These were ranch-style homes, some with porches, some with peaked roofs over the doorway. The majority of the houses looked well maintained, if on the small side, with double-car garages facing the street. Low-hanging clouds and nonstop rain cast a dreary pall over the entire neighborhood.
Ninety percent confident that he’d ditched any tail, he pulled into the driveway of the last house on the right. It was a bold choice to park in the open. Cole didn’t want to be too far from the car in case they needed to leave in a hurry, and the residential area as a whole left few places to hide. At the end of the street, perhaps fifty feet from the driveway, a glowing orange and white neon sign declared the road a dead end.
Cole cut the engine and climbed out. He scanned several cars parked along the curb, looking for shadowy figures behind the wheel, for telltale markers that the agents were already here. The incessant downpour made it difficult to see. His gut instinct demanded that he whisk Madalina away, get her far from familiar things. He’d made a promise, however, and there was a chance they might discover information here they couldn’t get anywhere else. The trip was worth the danger, in his opinion. Against his spine, the metal of the gun warmed to the temperature of his skin.
He herded Madalina toward the front of a beige stucco home with a rock facade halfway up the outer walls and an arch instead of a peak over the door. Birds of paradise lined the L-shaped sidewalk, with smaller bursts of colorful flowers filling the ground space. Under the porch overhang, he hovered close while Madalina fished keys from her purse. Once they were both inside, he engaged the dead bolt. It wouldn’t stop anyone desperate to get in, but at least an adversary would have to make a hell of a lot of noise to get inside with them.
“No one’s been here. Everything looks like it’s supposed to,” Madalina said with a wealth of relief in her voice.
“I have no idea where to look in here, so I’ll keep watch while you search for clues. Hurry!” The privacy of the home afforded him the luxury of liberating the gun. Cole held it down at his side, finger pressed straight along the weapon above the trigger. The layout—living room in the front, dining area off to the side, kitchen beyond that, and bedrooms down a long hallway—gave him plenty of windows to conduct his watch. He made sure not to be seen from the street while he surveyed, on the lookout for any unusual activity. The dead end concerned him. It gave them one less route out in case of emergency. Part of his success ditching the agents last evening had been the myriad roads available leading out of the area. It was impossible to cover every single entrance and exit. He’d managed to slip through, although he probably wouldn’t be so lucky the next time.
Passing a fireplace mantel on his way from one window to another, he caught a glimpse of family portraits angled creatively between a length of fake ivy. A fresh-faced, youthful Madalina stood between middle-aged parents who were already showing a lot of gray in their hair. Madalina’s mother, with shorter hair more silver than black, looked like the go-getter, effervescent sort. She was always smiling, always focused and alert. The father, taller than the mother and Madalina both, had a more stoic appearance. Yet there was something about the gleam in his eyes and the curl at the corner of his mouth that made Cole think Madalina’s father could be a handful. Madalina ranged in age from perhaps nine to eighteen, with one picture from prom night. She’d had shorter hair then, but was still a beauty in her crimson gown and wrist corsage of rosebuds. Her date was a gangly boy with braces and a piece of hair sticking up at the back who reminded Cole of Dennis the Menace.
Moving on, the images lingering in his mind, he looked through the edge of the blinds to the road.
Elsewhere in the house, he heard Madalina going through drawers and cabinets.
“Find anything?” he called out.
The banging and squeak of drawer hardware ceased.
Cole regarded the stormy day from another bedroom, gaining a different perspective of the yard and part of the driveway. He didn’t like that he couldn’t see the entire front of the house. The garage blocked his view of the other houses on this side of the street and impeded his ability to see vehicles until they were right in front of the home.
Not an optimal situation for surveillance.
CHAPTER TEN
The extreme relief Madalina felt when she realized the house was intact faded as her attention turned to the search for clues. She tried all the usual places first: the nightstand drawers in her parents’ bedroom, the master closet, the cabinets beneath the double sinks. She even tried the box under the bed that she knew contained her mother’s favorite pictures and letters. Nothing new had been added, and nothing looked out of place or suspicious. She moved through the guest room, which had once been her bedroom. Madalina had taken all her things when she moved out, leaving nothing behind for her mother and father to cling to. That didn’t mean she didn’t experience little pangs of nostalgia as she searched the old familiar closet, which was now stuffed with holiday supplies and decorations.
She hit the kitchen next, sorting through the “everything” drawer—pawing through scissors, odds and ends, tape, glue, thumbtacks, a notepad, and extra pens. No strange letters with explanations about the dragon were anywhere to be found.
Just as she turned to the refrigerator, where numerous notes were suspended by butterfly magnets, a hand slithered over her mouth. A second pair of hands swooped her legs from beneath her, a neat display of timing and skill. A leather glove smothered her shouts and screams while she kicked and thrashed, desperate to make some kind of noise. Carried through the kitchen and out the open sliding glass door—which had been closed when she’d entered earlier—Madalina flailed a fist toward the aluminum frame, only to have her arm chop blocked before she made contact.
Cole was just around the corner in one of the bedrooms. If she could create a ruckus, he would probably hear her despite the storm unleashing a torrent of rain and low growls of thunder. Her attempts to alert him failed.
The men carried her across the back porch, moving quickly and in tandem, suggesting they had quite a lot of skill at abduction. She caught glimpses of dark clothing and running shoes with thick tread. Madalina screamed into the leather, thrashing harder, succeeding only in making her abductors trap her arms tighter against her body. The garage wall provided excellent cover as the men ran along the side of the house. Madalina knew this was a major blind spot, impossible to see from any other vantage point. Many California houses were structured in this way, leaving a long pathway between the side of the home and the fencing separating one property from another.
Running with her through the open side gate, from which the lock had been cut, the men darted through a stand of palms and foliage into the neighbor’s front yard. Madalina’s mother had prided herself on the degree of privacy she’d achieved with her many plants and bushy trees. Little had she known that it would keep her daughter from being spotted during an abduction.
Before she knew what had happened, Madalina found herself in the back of a sedan parked one house up on the same side of the street. All but invisible to Cole unless he ran out to the front yard or the end of the driveway. A scream finally ripped through the interior of the car as it pulled away from the curb, circling back toward the intersection. Held down by the weight of a body, face forced into the seat cushion, Madalina ceased fighting long enough to make a new plan. There had to be some way to outmaneuver the man pinning her to the seat. Some way to take him off guard.
If only she’d paid more attention in the kitchen or heard the hiss of the sliding glass door. If only she had glimpsed shadows, recognized the scuff of a shoe on the floor.
Madalina’s parents’ room gave Cole no better view than the other two. He paced before the window, restless, squinting past the deluge to the street. It was raining so hard that the droplets bounced off the asphalt in visible rebounds. Fronds from small palms along the front of the porch bent under the weight of the onslaught, and a steady stream had already started to race along the gutters on the other side of the street.
Pacing out of the master bedroom, he stalked down the hallway into the living room. “Anything? I have to tell you, I don’t like that I can’t see the upper half of the street. I’m sure it’s great privacy for your folks, but it’s crap for surveillance.”
Silence.
He glanced toward the kitchen, realizing something seemed off about the sound of the rain. When he saw the open sliding glass door, he brought the gun up and swept the kitchen, then stepped out onto the back porch. An awning kept the rain at bay.
“Madalina!” He ran into the house, bellowing her name, once he saw she wasn’t outside. “Madalina! Are you in here?” Cole checked each bedroom again and both bathrooms, thinking they might have crossed paths. The lack of an answer was ominous.
She wasn’t in the house.
Outside, he darted along the back of the home, taking the corner of the narrow pathway with the gun raised, posture slightly crouched. Out from under the protection of the porch cover, the rain pelted his hair, his skin. The gate at the other end of the pathway stood wide open.
Somehow he didn’t think Madalina had made the grave mistake of wandering out front by herself. Running, he blew past the gate, winding up in the driveway with the Jaguar. It was still there, and Madalina wasn’t inside.
He checked the street, the sidewalk, the neighbor’s front yard.
Nothing.
Despite all his precautions, Madalina was gone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Left, right, right, left. Madalina felt the sedan take each turn, leading her farther away from her parents’ home. From Cole. Lacking a coherent plan, she fought for all she was worth, until the assailant pinned her free arm down and literally sat on the outside of her thigh. It immobilized her entire body, pressing her harder into the seat. This low, without the advantage of looking out the window, she lost her sense of direction.
They could be going anywhere.
The man pinning her down spoke in rapid Chinese to the driver, although Madalina, who hadn’t ever taken a Chinese course in her life, had no idea what he was saying. Maybe her struggling disconcerted the man, made him nervous that she might break free and wreak havoc.
Sure, Madalina. A man who can steal you right out of a house in total silence will really be afraid that you’ll overpower him. She might have rolled her eyes at herself if she hadn’t been so absorbed with how to distract the men and make a getaway.
Not only did she lose her sense of direction; she lost track of time. She couldn’t tell how long they’d been in the car, didn’t know if fifteen minutes or an hour had passed.
The conversation between the two men—no, three—intensified. Madalina could tell by the terseness and the impatient edge that there was a disagreement going on. The car surged, picking up speed. A burst of Chinese, a shriek that sent a chill down Madalina’s spine, preceded the sudden impact of another car. The cataclysmic explosion of metal on metal sent the sedan into a sharp spin, bits of safety glass blowing across the interior. The man atop her flew forward between the seats. Buckling inward, the door trapped the driver in his seat, while the passenger smacked his head against the window. Airbags had deployed, sparing the driver and passenger fatal wounds.
Thanks to her prone position and the cushioned seat, Madalina escaped serious injury. The volatile impact stunned her nevertheless.
This time when she screamed, nothing impeded the sound.
In the eerie silence immediately after the crash, when the sedan stopped spinning, Madalina wasted no time scrabbling across the seat. Pushing one man’s legs out of her way, dazed but intent on escaping the car, she spilled onto the wet asph
alt in an ungainly heap. Wincing as she forced her stiff muscles into action, instantly soaked by the deluge, she staggered to her feet.
Out here, she could see that a white Suburban had hit the sedan as it passed through the intersection. It wasn’t difficult to assume that the agents had run a red light. Pieces of metal and glass littered the street. A turn signal blinked off and on, off and on, casting a red-orange glow across the pavement. The driver’s door of the sedan looked as if a giant fist had pummeled the metal, leaving a considerable dent behind. Rain battered the damaged vehicles, falling ever harder, as if the heavens themselves had decided to unleash a biblical flood. The entire scene seemed suspended in a gray haze, not entirely real.
Madalina didn’t linger. She dodged around another car on shaky legs, passing through the headlight beams, boots pounding noisily over the asphalt as she ran.
All she could think about was getting away. This was her chance, her shot to lose her captors. Go, go, go, before the shock wears off, and one of the men gives chase.
She was in shock herself, and she knew it, but her survival instinct demanded that she flee.
Ignoring shouts from concerned drivers, Madalina located a familiar café that indicated the Chinese men had driven back to Whittier, which both relieved and dismayed her. She was here, running for her life, yet lacking the one component she had become used to in times of crisis: Cole.
You can get away without him. Think about all the things you’ve learned from him since this nightmare began.
She’d lived in this town long enough to know back roads and alleyways and other niches to hide. Ducking between the café and a dollar store, she ran through the back lot to another, smaller street that paralleled the main thoroughfare where the accident had occurred.
The sound of sirens wailed in the distance, briefly obliterated by a sharp crack of thunder.
Escaping Vegas (The Inheritance Book 1) Page 9